


The Trouble With Miss Alston

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Felix Mountfitchet is somewhat harrowed: the Prime Minister couldn’t control a country cake stall and yet he’s running the country, he needs to have a long-overdue conversation with his nephew about sexuality, his niece is convinced that she is a detective, the coffee machine in the break room has been sparking since late July, and his niece’s school teacher is extremely pretty.The elusive M of the British government, who once received a letter of thanks from the crown, is just about managing to raise his niece and nephew while running the country from behind the scenes. However, Daisy’s favourite teacher — Miss Lucy Alston — may complicate matters.It doesn’t help that she has secrets of her own.
Relationships: Bertie Wells & Daisy Wells, Felix Mountfitchet/Lucy Mountfitchet
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	1. looking rather like a mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunshinedflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinedflower/gifts).



Felix thought that he had done a good job, all things considering. After battling with his sister and court officials, and then several rather bitter and nasty teachers at Daisy’s school, feuding with government officials somehow seemed less stressful.

Despite the stress of recent years, he reckoned that he was doing alright. Bertie had received a serious talking-to about accepting himself before being sent off to secondary school in an enormous blazer and a smartly tucked-in shirt (that was somehow always rumpled and covered in pen by the end of the day). He was faring perfectly well at school, despite a number of detentions for fighting that Felix believed were justified (if Bertie got enormous ice creams as treats that suspiciously coincided with these events, nobody had to know). Daisy, a precocious seven-year-old girl, was venturing into middle school and proudly boasting about her new best friend and  _ accomplice _ . Even though she also got into tiffs and arguments with teachers, she seemed to be absolutely at one with herself and determined to be a grown up.

What was irking Felix wasn’t in the bounds of his niece or nephew, nor was it his work. It was nothing to do with Daisy’s recent autism diagnosis that was pinned up on the corkboard in their flat, or the fact that Bertie talked about one of his new friends  _ so much _ that Felix was fairly certain a conversation about sexuality was in order. No, what was eating at him was a serious school-teacher of Daisy’s who stared him down over prim and proper glasses every time he picked her up.

_ Miss Alston. _

* * *

He began to notice it in earnest one evening when he picked Daisy up from school with Bertie in tow, running late with his tie askew and feeling rather like a mess that he would rather no functioning adult saw. His meeting had dragged on an hour over the scheduled ending time and, with the only other attendee from his department — Rhys Jones — napping beside him, he had been forced to sit through it all. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was a nightmare, the Foreign Secretary was clearly being puppeteered by the Prime Minister, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office couldn’t go half of one minute without insulting somebody in the room.

He rushed onto the Deepdean and Weston School grounds to find Daisy sitting patiently on a bench waiting for him, animatedly discussing a book with her teacher. Bertie was dragging his heels behind him, alternating between complaining about his best friend ignoring him and wondering why a particular young man in his history class wouldn’t stop staring at him.

“Uncle Felix!” Daisy called out in that particular haughty tone that was a perfect mimicry of Felix’s lecturing voice and an unfortunate side-effect of his presence in her life. “You’re  _ late _ .”

“I’m aware, you mischief-maker,” he replied lightly, taking her bag from her as she flounced over, blonde plaits awry and cheeks a little flushed from the October cold. “And how was your day?”

“Good,” she answered promptly, and he knew that she meant it. “I finished reading my book and Miss Alston let me issue  _ ten  _ from the library! Year Threes are only meant to have three!”

Ruffling her hair, he said, “Aren’t you lucky?” and bent down to press a kiss to her forehead.

When he straightened up again, he noticed with some alarm that Daisy’s teacher was walking over to them. She was an awfully  _ present  _ woman, almost frighteningly alive and existing in the moment. Her brown hair was brushed out into loose curls, and she wore bright red lipstick and a blouse with a sensible tweed blazer and matching skirt. All in all, she was leagues more put-together than Felix, who hoped to get home, make sure that Daisy and Bertie did their homework, and then sink into a hot bath where he could forget about the government for half an hour.

“I hope that you won’t make a habit of being late like this, Mister Mountfitchet,” she said severely, though there was a hint of amusement on her face. “I have places to be.”

“Trust me, my lateness was unplanned,” he said, hardly able to concentrate because of the sound of Bertie and Daisy ragging each other behind him, and this Miss Alston and her sparkling dark eyes. “Meetings can be… eventful.”

Nodding, she allowed herself a slight smile and said, “I know the feeling. Teachers  _ love _ the sound of their own voices, I’ve had some of the longest meetings of my life since September.”

They both laughed and Felix figured that he was conducting an interaction with another human fairly well considering that the only other one he had been involved in since the end of the meeting was with Rhys Jones (who was not exactly a conversationalist and had declared their wish for all government ministers to unfortunately perish before bidding Felix goodbye, getting on their bike and cycling off).

“DAISY!” Bertie yelped, and Felix turned to him wrestling his sister into an improvised wrestling hold in order to get his phone back. “Squashy, you beast, give it over! There’s something called privacy, and— OW! UNCLE FELIX!”

Taking a deep breath, Felix said, “Daisy, please give your brother his phone back. If you want to know who he’s talking to, ask politely. Bertie, Daisy is half of your height and four years younger than you, be gentle with her.”

“Yeah, she makes up for it in annoyance,” he grumbled, but he bent down slightly and Daisy stood up on her tip-toes, pressing her forehead to Bertie’s.

“That’s how they say sorry,” he explained to Miss Alston, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “Again, I’m really sorry about this, I don’t want to keep you from your evening.”

“It’s alright, life gets in the way.” She smiled warmly. “You seem like a conscientious guardian but I have to be strict when parents are late — I’m sure you know the awful sorts that are out there.”

He nodded. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. No harm done.” His internal monologue was wishing for a warm bath; too much contact with cold reality, he thought.

A peculiar expression on her face, she looked Felix up and down. “Are you aware that your lanyard does not have your name on it?”

Felix looked down and saw the upside-down letters spelling out  _ Rhys Jones _ , and wished that the tarmac would swallow him up.


	2. dangerous ways to carry groceries

The next time Felix happened across the elusive Miss Alston, he was in Tesco and deeply regretting it.

Daisy was very strictly reading from the shopping list on Felix’s phone, while Bertie grabbed the items that she listed and attempted to get them into the trolley using a variety of interesting methods. By the time they reached aisle six, Felix was fairly sure that his nephew had invented several new and likely hazardous Olympic sports. Daisy was giggling her head off when she would usually be slightly on-edge and picking up details about every stranger that walked past, so he couldn’t complain.

“Look out for Daisy’s ear defenders, Bertie,” Felix gently scolded as a can of soup came perilously close to his niece’s head.

“Lentils,” Daisy announced, seemingly unaware of the danger that her skull was in. “Oh, Uncle Felix, a person called  _ Riz _ sent you a text. It was a screenshot of some news article, and lots of swear words.”

Hurriedly taking his phone back, Felix sent his co-worker — Rhys, who was used to mispronunciations of their name — a message of emphatic agreement about governmental idiocy, and muted his notifications. He handed it back and resumed pushing the trolley. “There you go, Daisy. How are you feeling?”

“A little bit more than okay! It’s very loud and the tannoy voice stabs right through my ear defenders and into my ear drums, but I like the list — even though I hate  _ making _ lists — and I’m excited to go back home and start reading my new book.”

Smiling at her, Felix squeezed her shoulder and said, “That’s good, Daisy, I’m glad.” He looked up and resisted the urge to yelp. “Bertie, do  _ not  _ throw that can!”

He sighed and placed it into the trolley. “What’s next, Squashy?”

“Two tins of chopped tomatoes.”

“Why did you make Bertie leave his phone at home, Uncle Felix?” she asked curiously, blinking up at him.

“Why don’t you try and work it out, little detective?” he replied, and she grinned.

Thinking back to extensive complaints from the previous night, she said, “It’s because he’s worrying over his stupid best friend and keeps burying himself in the problem. You’re hoping that being away from his phone for an extended period of time will give him some perspective on Stephen stupid Bampton.”

“Very good, little miss mischief!” he praised, ruffling her golden hair as best he could around his ear defenders.

Bertie was inventively balancing two tins of chopped tomatoes on top of each other, supported by only one hand, and he deposited his findings in the trolley with an almighty clatter.

“I’m a quarter of a way down the list, Bertie,” she said, holding out the phone. “Do you want to swap jobs?”

Deciding that he needed a little while to brainstorm more ways to make his sister laugh, Bertie nodded and accepted the phone from her. She peered at the list, announced, “Mangoes and kidney beans!” and rushed off in a bluster of blonde hair.

“Uncle Felix,” Bertie said, carefully looking anywhere but his uncle, “what does it mean when you can’t stop thinking about someone?”

Felix had several answers to that but decided on the most simple one — which omitted the existence of pretty school teachers — saying, “It usually means that you feel a strong emotion towards them. Jealousy, anger, happiness… if it’s a positive feeling, it could mean that you like them a lot. What  _ sort _ of like is up to you to decide.”

He nodded slowly. “That makes sense. I think.”

‘Has a girl caught your eye?’ was on the tip of Felix’s tongue before he remembered to recalibrate. “Is there someone pretty at school, then?”

“Maybe.” Bertie shrugged and became very interested in a shelf of Tesco-branded  _ Cream of Tomato  _ soup. “Just this… someone in my history class — the person who was staring at me — is… I don’t know. He looks nice.” His ears had turned an impressive shade of red. “Can we not talk about this anymore?”

He nodded. “Of course,” he said, trying not to let his laughter show through in his voice. Bertie’s tremendous awkwardness around the subject of love had been funny to Felix for several years and he had mastered the art of not showing it.

From the far end of the aisle, which Felix thought they would have been done with rather quicker had Bertie not been demonstrating his inventive array of dangerous ways to carry groceries, Daisy let out a shout. “Miss Alston!” she said in surprise.

Suddenly alarmed by the presence of a functional adult, Felix looked down at his person as if frightened that his trousers had spontaneously disappeared for the sole purpose of embarrassing him. He looked back just in time to hear an enormous clatter and his niece shouting, “OOPS!”

Bertie was about to ask why Felix looked like he had swallowed a lemon, glanced to the end of the aisle, and made the sensible decision to shut his mouth. He also found himself wondering if maybe Alfred Cheng had a point about him looking ‘sour’ around particular boys who sat two seats away in history class.

“Daisy, lovely!” Miss Alston greeted, somehow showing a complete lack of surprise even with several cans of mangos rolling up against her smart flats. “You mustn’t move so fast, you could have hurt yourself!”

Felix was familiar with what was happening to Daisy’s teacher: she had just rapidly shifted into work mode in the middle of Tesco, much like Felix whenever he saw a co-worker in public. He smiled awkwardly at her and pushed the trolley over, remembering to put it at the side out of the way before walking to Daisy. “Little miss mischief, you’re certainly living up to your name,” he said teasingly, picking up a couple of stray cans that she had missed and putting them back on the shelf. Straightening up, he turned to Miss Alston and found her alarmingly close to him. “We do keep meeting, don’t we?”

She laughed. “Indeed we do! It seems like you’ve been having quite the eventful time shopping.”

“Yes, it tends to be with these two about. I don’t think I’ve had a quiet evening since I started taking care of them.” He turned to look at Daisy and Bertie, arranging all the groceries in the trolley into a bizarre Jenga tower of produce, and chuckled.

“Just you at home, then?” she asked, looking over at the two of them and laughing too.

He nodded and said, “Yeah, they’re a handful but we manage. I couldn’t ask for better kids, even if Daisy is rather worryingly set on being a detective at present.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard plenty of this from her and Miss Wong.” Checking her watch, she added, “Oh, do call me Lucy, by the way. No sense in the formalities; we’re both adults, after all.”

Feeling rather more alarmed that he really should have, he said, “Oh, um… call me Felix, in that case.”

Lucy smiled. “It’s good to see you somewhat put together, though I do see where Daisy gets her chaotic lack of organisation from.”

“It seems to be genetic!” he said, chuckling. “Well, I won’t keep you.”

After Lucy walked away, throwing a smile over her shoulder, Felix took a deep breath and turned around to see Bertie whisper something in Daisy’s ear, and her collapse against him in fits of giggles. “Grown-ups are weird,” Daisy announced, and resumed her hunt for the elusive lentils.

Bertie looked at his uncle with his lips pressed together, clearly trying not to laugh. “She’s right, you know.”


	3. doing absolutely everything wrong at once

The third time he encountered Lucy Alston, he was expecting it and was subjected to bullying about that fact. 

“Parents’ evening tonight,” Felix grumbled as a screwed-up memo shot past his head and bounced off the wall above the bin. To Rhys Jones, discarding their post-it notes was an Olympic sport. “Just what I need after that email from the Secretary of Stupidity that cleared up ­ _ nothing _ , a bunch of adults that don’t understand autism trying to tell me how to raise my niece.”

“I love how you’ve got two kids and I’m sitting here with Tinder as probably the, like, third most-used app on my phone.”

“Are the other two Grindr and Hinge?” Felix asked mildly, and then failed to dodge Rhys throwing a screwed-up form at his face.

Sealing a letter with a smirk, Rhys asked, “Are you going back into fieldwork soon?”

Felix shook his head. “No. Daisy and Bertie’s parents aren’t cleared for visitation yet — not that I’d subject them to Margaret if they were — and I don’t have anyone else I could leave the kids with. I don’t want Daisy or Bertie becoming kleptomaniacs which rules out their great-aunt, and I can’t exactly send them packing to Cambridge to stay with Eustacia.” He took a breath. “In other words, not until I can trust them to be alone.”

“The thing is, I’d suggest you sending them to their uncle if you need a break, but you are their uncle.” They reached over to put the letter on top of an ever-growing pile. “Anything good about parents’ evening?”

“Daisy has a good teacher this year but other than that… not much.” He could feel Rhys looking at him. “Oh, go on, what is it?”

“You’ve gone red.”

He sighed and cursed his pale complexion. “Daisy’s teacher is… a rather pretty young woman, and she’s astonishingly put-together. Quite annoying, really.” When he turned to look at Rhys, they were silently laughing to the point of gasps. “Rhys, are you okay? You’ve… you’ve turned  _ purple _ .”

Recovering themselves, Rhys shot Felix a devilish grin and said, “You have a crush.”

“I’m a grown man! I don’t have crushes!”

“Bullshit.” Rhys raised their eyebrows and went back to their paperwork, and contented themselves with being sufficiently impressed at how long Felix could swear at him for without repeating a single insult. 

* * *

“This is going to be excellent!” Daisy said, turning a circle in her best pale blue dress and fixing on her ear defenders to match. “I’m doing  _ so  _ well at school, Uncle Felix!”

Daisy’s optimism cheered him slightly in the face of the inevitable pokes and prods at Daisy’s autism that he was going to be forced to put up with, and Felix straightened his tie. It was patterned with magnifying glasses and was one of a selection of ridiculous ties that Rhys had got him over the years after somehow procuring him in the office Secret Santa for five years in a row. “You’re going to do wonderfully, Daisy dear.” He turned to look at Bertie, sitting on the table and staring down at his phone screen. “Has Stephen okay-ed you going to his while I’m with Daisy? I just want to double check.”

Awkwardly, Bertie kicked his legs. “I… um… never asked him?”

Felix was about to scold him for being disorganised before he realised that there likely was another reason. “Oh, Bertie, you should have told me. I would have worked something else out. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t wanna talk to Steph. He’s being… weird. Mean.” His voice petered off into a mumble and Felix took pity on him.

Walking over to Bertie, he brushed back golden curls and pressed a kiss to his nephew’s forehead. “Remember to let me know in advance in the future, okay?”

Bertie nodded, looking miserable.

“Chop chop, get your coat!” Felix said, snapping his fingers and smiling and cheerily as he could. “You’ll have to come with us, won’t you?”

Though he had a vaguely alarmed look on his face, Bertie acquiesced and rushed to dig through the piles of clothes in his messy room to find his coat. Felix didn’t often bug them to tidy, knowing that they both worked better in organised disorder, but he knew that sorting the clothes would have to be done soon.

“Boys are silly,” Daisy pronounced, buttoning her coat. It looked rather thirties in his opinion, and he was proud of Daisy for managing the buttons after struggling with her motor skills for so long.

“They are,” he agreed, ignoring the fact that he was one.

* * *

Bertie and Daisy feuded over what music they were going to play in the car before settling on The Greatest Showman soundtrack. Felix could probably recite the entire film script backwards in his sleep, as Daisy had developed a special interest when the film came out. He had lost count of the amount of times he saw it in the span of those three months.

“Squinty, why are you pulling Uncle Felix’s ‘I have a lot of paperwork to do’ face?” Daisy asked, speaking while trying to balance her tangle on her face.

“It’s called despair, Daisy,” Felix said, thankful for the small mercy that they were not both yelling along to the first song on the soundtrack.

Daisy frowned. “Why are you despairing?”

It was such a funny question that Felix had to make a conscious effort not to laugh.

“Nothing,” Bertie said, even though it was a painfully obvious something. Daisy graced him with a perfected raised eyebrow until he gave in. “Fine, you horror. Someone I… know from school is going to be there with his brother because he has some club after this and it was easier for them to go right to the club from here than back to his house.”

Daisy hummed, mildly interested in the provided particulars and wondering why her brother — who usually had the observational skills of a blind huntsman spider and the deductive abilities of a spoon — had bothered to collect such detailed information. “What’s his name?”

“Eh— Harold Mukherjee.”

“Oh.” Winding her tangle around her fingers, Daisy said, “I like George, he’s nice.”

Felix carefully did not point out Bertie’s fiercely flushed face that lit up in the glare of every streetlight they passed. “At least you’ll have someone to talk to.”

Looking like he would very much like to melt into the car seat, Bertie grumbled and started playing on his phone, mumbling along to the soundtrack. Daisy started singing along louder than strictly necessary, and Felix resolved to ask Rhys if the auditory damage from bombs that they learnt about could be inflicted by the happiness of loud children.

* * *

They weren’t late, which Felix considered a blessing. He was never late to meetings unless Rhys Jones was involved, but Daisy and Bertie’s particular fussing and last-minute shouts of, “I’ve just to go to do this one thing!” had a tendency to make them fashionably late to their domestic commitments alarmingly frequently.

Daisy ran to greet a young Chinese girl that Felix was all too familiar with as Hazel Wong — her father was a busy man and the poor girl had far too many duties at home. Felix, who firmly opposed parentification, had Hazel after school for at least four days a fortnight, one of which was always a sleepover. She called him Uncle Felix to match Daisy and Bertie, and waved to him happily when she spotted him, so he supposed that he was doing alright.

“I read about a cool mystery!” he could hear Daisy saying as they came closer, and she was practically bouncing. “You’ll really like it, there’s all these complicated codes and it’s only a little bit gory.”

She nodded happily and replied, “I found a little book about code-breaking at the library so we can start writing things in proper code like in the mystery books now!”

“What do normal little girls talk about?” Bertie asked, and Felix chuckled.

“I suppose… well, Daisy is our normal, isn’t she?”

Pulling a contemplative face, Bertie nodded and turned back to his phone. “I s’pose so, yeah.”

Bertie’s lack of interest in socialising forced Felix to interact with the frankly terrifying Vincent Wong, who made Felix feel like he was doing absolutely everything wrong at once and looked constantly disappointed with everything that was not his family. “Evening, Vincent,” he greeted awkwardly.

“Good evening, Felix,” he replied just as stiffly. “What are you expecting this evening?”

“Daisy always has good results, so I am not at all worried that her quality of work will be excellent,” Felix said, worrying that he sounded too aggressive. At work, he had the outspoken Rhys balancing out his mild jabs at idiotic ministers, but without that, the usually hidden harshness was obvious. “Though I will doubtless have to battle away accusations that I don’t know how to raise her.”

“That sounds difficult,” said Vincent in that way that reminded Felix of the more competent politicians he knew reading off a teleprompter without stumbling — the bar for governmental acclaim was depressingly low. “I am sure that Daisy is doing well.”

Vincent disapproved of Felix’s troublesome niece in the same way that Felix disapproved of Vincent’s first wife and her parenting skills, and so he supposed that they were even. “What are you hoping for with Hazel?”

“She is wonderfully clever, my daughter, so I am not at all worried. I am merely concerned that she may be subject to teasing, that is my main concern given that we only moved to England in July.”

Felix nodded in understanding. Even though he was not the fondest of Vincent, he understood that he absolutely didn’t have a grasp of how difficult the transition to a new country must have been. “If anybody could prompt some of the frankly useless teachers at this school into doing something about bullying, it would be you,” he replied, thinking of how even  _ he _ quivered under Vincent’s slightly disapproving looks. “I have exchanged some less-than-friendly emails with the headmistress myself, after Daisy’s maths teacher failed to appreciate the fact that she is autistic.”

“Ah, yes, she is not a kind woman,” Vincent agreed solemnly. “She was disagreeable at best when we signed Hazel up — had the gall to suggest that teachers may be unable to understand her because of her accent!”

“How awful!” he said, remembering vaguely Hazel’s mentions of her father’s feud with Headmistress Griffin. “If Daisy can understand her with ear defenders on, adults have no excuse. At least their teacher seems to make up for this school’s headmistress.”

Bertie, from where he was trying to tactically blend into the bushes as they walked up the path to the school, snorted. Felix shot him an absolutely murderous glare and he burst out laughing (this always puzzled Felix, as it was the same glare that government ministers and foreign dictators and murderous gang leaders quailed under).

Further up the path, Daisy waved her arms and shouted, “George!”

Hazel called, “Alexander!” and the two of them rushed into the warm light of the school reception hall, giggling when Daisy won their impromptu race.

Felix was grateful to cross the threshold into a heated building, and he looked across the reception to where Daisy and Hazel were standing by a trophy cabinet with two boys, whispering about their latest detective case. According to Daisy and Hazel, this one was a  _ competition _ . They clearly enjoyed themselves as they spent hours in Daisy’s room plotting their next moves, and Daisy loved mysteries more than anything else in the world, so Felix didn’t mind listening to them rambling about their plans and supplying them with cookies and apple juice to fuel their evenings.

“Did you see where your brother got to?” a voice from Felix’s left asked, and he noticed a woman smartly dressed in a sari with her dark hair pulled back. 

“I don’t know, Mum! I don’t have George  _ microchipped _ ,” came the exasperated reply, and then the smart and regular footsteps of the voice’s owner came to an abrupt halt. “Oh— hey, Bertie!”

“Harold!” Bertie said in a voice three octaves higher than the almost-teenage grumble that Felix was used to. “Hi! Um…”

Tuning out the awkward teenage floundering, Felix made a beeline across the small reception hall to Daisy. There weren’t many families hanging around, clearly most of them had decided sensibly to arrive right before their appointments and leave soon after. “Your brother is awkwardly floundering over there,” he said frankly, addressing her as an adult as per usual, “but we have places to be. Isn’t your meeting first in the running order?”

Daisy nodded. “I handed in my slip first.” Then she paused. “Oh, he’s being all—” She waved her hands round in what Felix thought was a fair approximation of her brother’s awkwardness “— because he doesn’t know how to talk to other human beings, right?”

“That’s mean,” he scolded, and waited for her to bid her friends goodbye and come with him. He walked over to the desk to ask where on earth they were meant to go, not having the heart to berate Daisy for pointing out Bertie on the other side of the room. He found the situation slightly funny himself.

The woman behind the desk gave him some less-than-helpful directions, and he was about to ask for clarification when Daisy sighed. “I know where it is, I can show him. Sorry, Miss Tennyson.”

“It’s quite alright, Daisy,” she replied with a smile, waving her away so that she could speak to the next parents.

Before walking off with Daisy, Felix caught his nephew’s eye and mouthed ‘doing okay?’ across the hall at him.

He nodded, and then excused himself from his conversation with Harold to rush over in a fluster. “Um— Harold suggested that we go and get milkshakes from that shop over the road, can I have some money?”

“Be careful, don’t get run over, don’t talk to strangers. Text me every fifteen minutes,” he said, running through their usual list of rules as he handed Bertie ten pounds. “Have fun.”

“Thanks, Uncle F!” he called as he walked backwards away, clearly eager to rush back across the hall. “Promise that Harold won’t murder me!”

Grumbling something about boys, Daisy seized him by his hand and marched him out of the reception and down the hall to Miss Alston’s classroom.

* * *

“Hello, Miss Alston!” Daisy said as she rushed into the classroom and sat down in one of the chairs. “My uncle is here!”

“I can see that, Daisy,” she replied kindly, smiling at Felix as he sat down. “It’s good to see you again, Mister Mountfitchet. Let’s get straight to it, shall we?”

He nodded. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you don’t tell me about school, little miss mischief!”

Daisy giggled and headbutted his arm. “Uncle  _ Fe _ lix!” she protested, and he laughed.

Suppressing a smile, Lucy averted her eyes. “Well, Daisy’s grades are marvellous. She did some  _ amazing  _ creative writing last week, didn’t you?”

“Yes!” She flapped her hands eagerly. “I wrote about some detective girls, and they found a missing dog!”

“It turns out the dog was in the house all the time!” Lucy said, and Felix could see what Daisy liked about her: she was so genuinely involved in all of her students and their work. “That was very clever, Daisy, I would never have thought of that!”

“I made the mummy guilty, Uncle Felix,” she said, tipping up her face to look at him in a proud way. “She was evil and wicked!”

He suppressed a sigh and mentally filed that another conversation was needed about Margaret. “Very good, Daisy, well done.”

Although the exasperation was lost on Daisy, Lucy noticed and frowned. “Daisy also got almost full marks on her maths test! She missed one mark and it was because she forgot to explain a step in her multiplying.”

She folded her arms and scowled. “Silly mark. I got the right answer, why does it matter?”

“Because if you get the wrong answer but you do the right method, you still get some credit,” Lucy explained gently, touching the sleeve of the little girl’s coat. “It helps people who aren’t as good at lessons as you get some more marks.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be fair on Beanie if they only marked right answers,” Daisy said, nodding in thoughtful understanding. Felix was suddenly appreciative that Lucy explained things in Daisy’s language, as opposed to the ‘because I said so’ that he was so used to from previous teachers. 

Lucy smiled. “Exactly!”

“Beanie isn’t very good at lessons, Uncle Felix,” she explained seriously. “But she is  _ good _ , and Hazel says that counts for a lot.”

Smiling, Felix ruffled her hair and said, “Your Hazel is very wise, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And she’s clever, she got  _ all _ the marks on the test!” She leant her face on her hands and scrunched up her nose, and Felix didn’t tell her to take her elbows off of the table. She wasn’t eating, after all, and he knew that Daisy didn’t like parents’ evening in the slightest. Why should he make it worse by correcting something that wasn’t harming anyone?

“Lavinia got all the marks too, but she  _ hates _ it when we tell her so. She doesn’t like being noticed.”

Wondering exactly where Daisy had developed an ability to psychoanalyse her classmates and hoping that it wasn’t from him, Felix turned to Lucy and said, “That’s good to know! I’m very glad that she’s doing so well, Daisy sometimes finds instructions a bit of a puzzle if they aren’t explained in an understandable way.”

“Miss Alston is a good explainer,” Daisy agreed. “She understands my autism. She doesn’t make me look at her or stop me fiddling. And she doesn’t let Clementine tease me, like horrid Mr Prince did last year!”

Lucy smiled. “I’m glad, Daisy! You should feel safe in my classroom.”

“I wish all teachers were like you,” she replied with big blue eyes fixed on her teacher, her nose scrunched up and her features set in an expression that Felix knew well. She pulled the same face when she was around Hazel Wong, jealous of Jie-Jie and wishing that she had a mother figure just like that. Between alarmed and pleased that Daisy trusted Miss Alston in that way, Felix frantically hurried the conversation along before she could voice it. 

Chuckling, Lucy moved on down her notes. “Daisy is a very clever little girl, as all of her work evidences, but I think that she needs to learn how to play nice with others.”

“My classmates are dumb and they need to know!” she replied indignantly, sitting up straight in her chair.

Lucy took a steadying breath that Felix sympathised with. “If you think they’re being silly, telling them that they are in a derogatory way means that they will be embarrassed and they won’t be inspired to learn how to  _ not _ make silly mistakes. Maybe you could try explaining things to them? You’re very good at being kind to Beanie when we read books in class, aren’t you? Do you think that you could apply that to other situations?”

“That’s difficult,” Daisy replied in an honest voice. “Beanie tries really hard to understand but doesn’t, whereas Sophie and Rose don’t understand because they don’t listen to you! It’s different!”

“I understand that, they’re sometimes silly girls,” Lucy agreed, and Felix thought that perhaps she wasn’t being a strict professional. “But maybe you could try? It might compel them to be nicer to you!”

She nodded. “That makes sense! I’ll try that!” With that, she went back to fiddling with the tangle in her lap. 

“How long have you had custody of them?” Lucy asked kindly, shuffling her notes. “I was looking through Daisy’s reports and I noticed a sharp improvement three years ago, and I wondered if that was connected.”

Felix stopped himself from saying that it had been three years, four months, and six days since he carried a sleeping four-year-old Daisy on his hip into his flat, Bertie trailing along behind him yawning and towing a suitcase. “Yes, it’s been about three years since I took custody of them.”

Nodding, Lucy said, “That makes sense, Daisy’s grades and behaviour saw a huge improvement after that point.” Her voice softened as if to guard the conversation from Daisy, absorbed in her tangle. “It must be difficult — you don’t look any older than me.”

“I’m twenty-six.” Not for the first time, Felix wondered how exactly he had clawed his way into a prestigious government position with Daisy and Bertie to think about, somehow not managing to fuck up  _ either  _ part of his life while maintaining what could possibly be called a social life (Rhys Jones had been his work partner since internship at sixteen, and Inspector Priestley was his surest friend in the Metropolitan Police, which he counted as maintaining friends).

“I am too.”

“Weird age, isn’t it?” Felix said conversationally, and Daisy raised her eyebrow at him before going back to her stimming.

Leaning forward and into the conversation, she said, “ _ Isn’t _ it? Half of my friends are getting married, a few are still in school, and everyone else is stuck back in my hometown.”

“My best friend was teasing me about this very topic earlier this afternoon!” Felix replied, chuckling.  _ Best friend? Rhys is going to hate that when I tell them. _

“Uncle Felix,” Daisy said suddenly, looking up wearing what he had lovingly dubbed her ‘considering things’ expression. “I know it’s bad to interrupt but I was thinking about Bertie and I realised— he  _ likes _ Harold, doesn’t he?”

Felix tried incredibly hard not to laugh, fully intended to put his parenting face on and scold her, and bottle up the laughter to share with Rhys tomorrow. However, he noticed Lucy with a twinkle sparkling in her eye, hiding her amused smile with her hand, and he broke.

In a matter of seconds, Daisy was flanked by two giggling adults and indignantly asking, “What’s so funny?”

* * *

They had been chased out of the appointment by an indignant Vincent Wong who was not too pleased that Felix was cutting into Hazel’s parents’ evening. He gabbled out apologies while Daisy and Hazel giggled, and then they were striding out into the car park, looking forward to a heated flat and hot chocolates to warm their cold hands. 

“Uncle Felix, why did she want to know all of that?” Daisy asked, fiddling with her tangle. 

“She’s just worried about you, Daisy, she’s probably concerned about everything that’s been going on,” he replied absently, concentrating on working out where his nephew was and where he had parked the car. 

With a suspicious frown on her face, she peered up at him, looking dreadfully like a miniature detective from the thirties in her plush brown coat. “And it wasn’t for anything else?”

“It’s nothing! She’s just concerned, she really seems to like you.” Felix was incredibly proud of Daisy for her good marks and charming giggles, clearly happy with her education for once, and he didn’t care much for anything else.

“Which is why she wanted to know if you’ve been raising me and Squinty alone?”

Felix’s lecturing voice clicked into its familiar place and he scolded, “Daisy, don’t call your brother that, you know he—”

“...Uncle Felix,” she said in a disappointed deadpan voice. 

“ _ Oh. _ ” Those were implications that he was decidedly  _ not _ ready to unpack. 

He hurried to divert the conversation as they crossed the road to the little square of shops opposite the school, debating whether or not to embarrass Bertie when they found him. 

“We don’t even need to!” Daisy said, pointing down the path. “There he is!”

To Felix’s endless amusement, there his nephew was, sitting on a bench and huddled in his coat, drinking a milkshake and laughing at something that Harold Mukherjee had said.

“He totally fancies Harold,” she sulked, kicking at a stone. “Why wasn’t I allowed to say it?”

“We laughed because it was so unexpected, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he explained as kindly as he could, trying not to start laughing again.

“BERTIE!” Daisy shouted. “We’re going!”

The pair of them started but Bertie acquiesced, bouncing up to walk over. “Harold!” he called. “Come with us, you need to go back anyway!”

“Oh! Okay!” He nodded and got up, smiling awkwardly as he fell into step beside Bertie.

Daisy groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “ _ Boys _ .”


	4. (un)professional phone calls

The fourth time Felix encountered Lucy Alston, it was because of a dreaded phone call.

“Squashy, will you hurry up? You’re going to make me late!”

Lucy heard the commotion as she peered around the area at the top of the steps that were one of the entrances to the school grounds, one final check for students lagging behind on getting inside before going to supervise the playground. The voices were coming from a car parked just outside the entrance, a battle of trying to get someone to get out of the car and go into school.

“Have a good day at school, Daisy!” came a familiar voice, accompanied by a kissing noise and faint giggles.

A much ruder voice continued to insist, “Squashy, what’s wrong with you today? You’re looking at me funny, what did I do?”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT, YOU’RE HORRID!” Daisy shrieked, rushing out of the car and slamming the door, clutching the straps of her bag across her front and storming away to the steps. “Oh. Hello, Miss Alston.”

“Hello, Daisy dear,” she said, crouching down to be level with the furious blonde girl. “Is there something wrong?”

She jerked her head down instantly, chin meeting her chest. “No. I’m okay.”

“If you say so,” Lucy replied, straightening up and brushing down her coat. “Come on, we still have five minutes until the bell goes, you can read your book on the wall next to Hazel.”

That seemed to cheer her up, and she had a bounce in her walk as she jumped down each step to the playground.

* * *

“Miss Alston!”

Lucy turned and looked down to see Hazel Wong tugging on the sleeve of her coat. “Miss!” she said again, eyes very worried and nose red from the cold. “It’s Daisy. She’s… she hurt Alexander.”

“What?” she asked sharply. “Where?”

“By the climbing frame!” Hazel replied. “Please come!” Nodding, Lucy rushed after the bundled-up and worried Hazel, hoping that Daisy had not done anything too severe. 

When they reached the climbing frame, Alexander Arcady was sprawled on the ground, clearly having fallen — or been pushed — with his palms cut up from the gravel and his trousers torn, knees bloody. Daisy was pushed up against one end of the climbing frame, her hands over her ears and her eyes screwed tight shut.

“Why did you push him?” Clementine Delacroix shouted at her, pushing herself up close to Daisy until she was shouting in her ear. “You’re such a bully, Daisy Wells!”

“And you’re a bitch!” Daisy snapped.

There were childish gasps all around, even from Hazel, who had rushed to Daisy’s side. She didn’t seem to know quite what to do, obviously fond of Alexander but wanting to stick by Daisy.

“What’s going on here?” Lucy asked in her most authoritative voice, and she watched Daisy curled even further into herself, bracing for the onslaught of shouting.

“DAISY PUSHED ALEXANDER!” came the expected chorus of voices, from all except some notable exceptions.

“I’m sure that there’s some more to this story,” she said sternly. “George, would you be so kind as to take Alexander to the medical room? Hazel, do you want to help?”

With a hesitant glance towards Daisy, she said, “Yes, Miss Alston. I’ll help.”

George smiled at Hazel and beckoned her over. He was an outspoken but very wise child, Lucy found, and comforting in a very tense and loud situation.

Looking around at the watching crowd of youthful faces, Lucy asked in a way that was not really a question, “Everybody except Clementine and Daisy, could you please go back to playing?”

With grumbles and groans, everybody scuttled away, except one student with glossy dark hair and a quite fashionable dark coat, who had been in the centre of the gaggle of students staring on at the action. “Please let me stay, Miss Alston!” Amina El Maghrabi said. “I think I can explain what happened.”

“Of course, Amina, I trust you to be sensible.” Lucy wasn’t sure if that was true, but she trusted the troublesome Amina’s judgement more than she trusted the often rude and unkind Clementine’s. Regarding Daisy, who hadn’t moved from her position pressed up against the bars of the climbing frame, she put on her softest voice and suggested, “Perhaps we should talk about this inside, where it’s warm?” Even though Daisy was likely in the wrong, Lucy couldn’t help but feel bad for the upset and overwhelmed little girl practically hidden behind her reams of blonde hair.

“Please!” Clementine and Amina chorused, and then the latter looked over to Daisy.

With a concerned look on her face, Amina carefully picked her way over the ground in patent shoes decorated with butterflies, and whispered, “Daisy? Do you want to come inside?”

Almost imperceptibly, Daisy shook her head.

“We can… get your ear thingies from the cloakroom?” Amina tried, blinking dark eyes at Daisy and regarding her with worry, her hands clasped together in front of her. “Come on. Please?”

There was another pause, less certain than the last.

“We have history next!” she said. “You like history!”

Slowly, Daisy nodded. “Okay,” she said in a very small voice.

* * *

They were sat in the classroom with only ten minutes left until the end of break, and Daisy had decided that she didn’t want to look at people. While Clementine sat sulking and Amina with her face cupped in her hands, Daisy was sat backwards on her chair with her ear defenders on and face ducked down towards her knees, which were drawn up against her chest.

“Turn around Daisy, you’re so weird,” Clementine said, her face screwed up and annoyed.

“Clementine, that’s not very nice!” Lucy scolded.

At the exact same time, Amina put on a voice scarily similar to Lucy’s and said, “That’s mean! We had an assembly on being ‘ccepting, don’t do that!”

Lucy had a brief moment of horror and pride that she was training up a class of socially conscious seven-year-olds. “Right. Amina, do you want to explain your view of what happened?”

She nodded. “Okay! Um… we were all talking about having big siblings. Hazel and Alexander weren’t, they don’t have big siblings, so Alexander was showing Hazel how he can climb the monkey bars on the climbing frame. Then… I think it’s… it was hard to pay attention, Daisy and George talk at the speed of light, but George mentioned that Daisy…” Her face was drawn in concentration, her hands drawing lines in the air as she tried to put together the conversation. “George mentioned that his brother knows Daisy’s brother. Daisy went very funny and pale, and she told George not to mention it. George pulled a face and said, “It’s true!” in that ‘pretending to sound like a grown-up’ way, and he asked Alexander to say what George’s brother had ‘pparently been saying about Daisy’s brother.”

As she paused to think about how to describe the rest of the events, Lucy quietly filed away Amina’s excellent impression of George Mukherjee to giggle about later. “Go on?” she prompted.

“Oh, yes! So… Alexander asked George to repeat what he had said, because he was all distracted by talking to Hazel. George re-explained the con… conver… conversation, and I helped at the beginning, but I stopped because Daisy got upset. She put her hands over her ears and started moving her head from side to side and banging her foot against the climbing frame, and…” Amina glanced to the side at her friend, and then away again, biting her lip guiltily. “Clementine called Daisy a not-very-nice word.”

“She was  _ being _ a freak,” Clementine mumbled. “Wasn’t lying.”

Lucy stifled a gasp and filed that comment away for a long-overdue call home. “What happened next, Amina?”

“I don’t think… George and Alexander heard. George gets really angry when people use horrible words and when George is mad at someone, Alexander is too. They also both like Daisy a whole lot! If they had heard, they would have shouted.” Amina looked over at Daisy, who was still as a statue except for her hands fiddling with her tangle. She was avoiding Clementine’s piercing gaze, furiously fixed on her friend. 

“Tattle-tale,” Clementine mumbled.

Amina’s expression soured and she continued, “Then Alexander did what George had asked, he started explaining what George’s brother had been saying about Daisy’s brother. And Daisy… she was already really mad and sad about what Clementine said. And whatever Alexander said — he mentioned a  _ fall out _ to do with Daisy’s brother, maybe that was it? — Daisy got even more angrier. She shouted and pushed Alexander and yelled at him to shut up. And then… Hazel ran to get you, Miss Alston.”

Lucy nodded. “That’s… quite the story, Amina. Thank you. Would you like to go back out to play?”

Her glance at Daisy was so brief that Lucy almost didn’t catch it. “No. I want to stay, please.”

Her dark eyes were earnest and so Lucy said, “Very well. Daisy, what have you been thinking about?”

She tilted her head, banging her ear defenders against her left shoulder repeatedly. “I want… are you going to call Uncle Felix, Miss Alston?”

“Yes, Daisy, I am.”

“Oh. I’ve been… really good this year! I… don’t want him to be mad.”

Trying to conceal a smile, because Amina El Maghrabi was as frighteningly perceptive as the child detectives in her class, Lucy said, “Your uncle is a very nice man, Daisy, I’m sure whatever he says will be fair and just.”

“Okay. And… can I talk to you afterwards? About why I got upset?” Daily sounded defeated and small but was surprisingly eloquent, good at voicing what she wanted. Lucy found herself not as shocked as she should have been that Daisy’s clumsy and awkward uncle was likely the source of that skill.

“Of course, Daisy. Now, what do you think you should do about what happened today?” she asked carefully.

Daisy turned around in her chair, and her face was flushed and her eyes were red, but she had a determined look on her face. “I want to apologise to Alexander. He… didn’t do anything wrong. Clementine upset me, but I was… mean to Alexander instead, because he said something that I didn’t like, but he didn’t mean to. Clementine did, and so I wish I’d pushed her instead!”

“HA!” Amina said, barking a sudden laugh and then covering her mouth under Lucy’s frosty glare. “Sorry, Miss Alston.”

She exchanged a careful, secret glance with Daisy, who smiled at her. The two of them went into fits of silent giggles as Lucy turned to Clementine. “Now, Clementine, I know that you aren’t directly involved but I will still be making a call home to your father.”

“Why? I told the truth! Aren’t we supposed to do that?”

Lucy took a breath to calm herself. “ _ Clementine _ . Please come to the office with me. Amina, you can go back outside to break now. Daisy, you can come with me and Clementine and go into the medical room to apologise to Alexander.”

Amina got to her feet. “I hope your dad doesn’t get too mad, Clementine,” she said with a frown on her face. “Oh… Daisy? Next time you’re going to push someone, tell me before you do it so that I can pay more attention. I know you feel bad about it but… it was kind of cool.” With that, she grinned and slipped out of the room and into the playground through the fire exit, and Lucy sighed.

* * *

“Daisy, come in,” Lucy called from outside the office as Clementine left, red in the face after a stern talking-to. Another teacher had kindly offered to take her class for their history lesson while she settled the dust of the break time squabble. “Sit down. You said you wanted to talk to me?”

Daisy nodded, eyes fixed on the tangle in her hands. “I’ve been trying to not think about Bertie all day, and I got so upset when George mentioned him. Then Alexander said about the exact thing that is the reason why I don’t want to think about him and… my head got burning hot and I was so  _ angry _ .” She wiped at her eyes and sniffed. “Yesterday night, I heard Bertie on the phone with someone, and he said that he had fallen out with one of his friends, and that… ‘Daisy was the final straw’. I didn’t want to hear about it because I hate hate  _ hate  _ when I do things wrong by accident. And I think I know which friend it is, horrid  _ Stephen _ , so I kept asking and asking if I’d done something wrong and Bertie wouldn’t tell me and said that he didn’t know what I was talking about and it made me so sad and angry because he usually treats me… like his friend.”

Daisy took a deep breath and her face was flushed brightly. “I hate it. I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure that you didn’t do anything wrong, Daisy dear,” Lucy said comfortingly. “Maybe the fall-out is still fresh and he doesn’t want to talk about it until everything is through? Would that make sense?”

Nodding, Daisy said, “Yes. It would.” She smiled. “I hope that, if he’s mad at me, he’ll tell me why tonight!”

“That sounds like a good aim. Do you want to go to history now?”

Daisy nodded and bounced up from her chair, and went to the door muttering, “Stupid Stephen, mean Stephen,” under her breath. Lucy smiled. 

* * *

Sitting down in the office, with some very strict words from Clementine’s father ringing in her ears, Lucy called the number written beside Daisy’s name. It was beside two crossed-out names and numbers printed as opposed to written,  _ George and Margaret Wells _ . As it rang, Lucy wondered if it would be beneficial to give Clementine some sessions with the school counsellor. Her father seemed rather too strict to be good for a seven-year-old.

“He _ llo _ ?” came an unfamiliar voice.

“Where on earth did you put that letter from the Secretary of Stupidity?” called a voice in the background. “I need to sign off on that— Rhys, is that my phone?”

“Sue me, it was ringing!”

“Give that here, it’s a licenced phone with encoded— RHYS!”

Lucy covered her mouth and giggled at the squabble on the other end.

“How are you competent enough to fight off mercs if you can’t even get your phone back from me?” the Welsh voice teased, accompanied by the sound of a rolling chair. 

“I’m filing an official report unless you give me my phone back. I’ll fucking do it, Rhys,” came the threatening reply. “I am getting the form. Do you see me? Are you seeing this? Watch my hand write your name under the ‘complaint’ section.”

“Have your bloody phone back, Christ!”

“Hello?” a rather breathless Felix greeted, and Lucy took a moment to collect herself.

“Hello. It’s Daisy’s school teacher, Miss Alston. I’ve called to discuss Daisy,” she said, thinking that she was doing excellently well at keeping it together. “Are you available for discussion?”

“Oh, of course! Give me a moment.” There was a shuffle as Felix moved the phone away from his ear and said, in hushed tones that Lucy strained to hear out of curiosity, “You can’t mute calls on these phones for whatever reason.”

“They think we’re conspiring with the Russians,” the Welsh voice — Rhys — deadpanned.

“Probably. Can you tell the people at the next meeting that I won’t be able to attend? Take my notes and that blasted letter, if you can find it.”

“Cheers, Felix. Let me know what trouble your idiots got into.”

“You have a meeting.  _ Go _ .” Felix put the phone back to his ear. “Sorry about that, er, Lucy.”

She chuckled. “It’s fine. What an eventful job you have!”

“Indeed,” he said, laughter in his voice. “So… what has Daisy done?”

“It appears that Daisy has been upset by something she overheard her brother say,” Lucy explained carefully. “She was antagonised at break by George Mukherjee and Alexander Arcady mentioning George’s brother’s friendship with her brother, and then another student — Clementine Delacroix, I believe you’ve had conversations with other staff about Clementine’s bullying behaviour towards Daisy before — called her a  _ freak _ . This understandably distressed Daisy, at just the wrong moment. Alexander then mentioned something that George’s brother had said about Daisy’s brother falling out with someone, and that tipped her over the edge. She pushed him off of the climbing frame and he’s bloodied both of his knees and scratched up his palms.”

“Oh  _ no _ .” Felix’s despair was clear in his voice, and he took a moment to process before saying, “Would you like me to come and collect her?”

“She seems okay now, and the lessons for the rest of today are ones that she enjoys,” Lucy replied. “Daisy is very upset by the idea that she has possibly caused a fall out between her brother and a friend of his — a  _ Stephen _ , she said? — and I tried to console her. I told her that perhaps her brother isn’t ready to talk about it yet and said that she should try asking him about it tonight. She will receive a detention for hurting Alexander, but she apologised to him and there is no bad blood between them.”

“Thank goodness,” Felix said with a sigh. “Bertie spoke to me this morning, after we had dropped Daisy off, so I can clear up the source of this confusion.”

“Oh?”

Taking a breath, he explained, “Bertie's best friend — who has been more cruel in recent months than I knew an eleven-year-old could be — insulted Daisy’s autism. Bertie declared it the final straw of their friendship, and he was so upset and mixed-up about it that he didn’t want to worry Daisy. The dear thing would only blame herself, and he wanted to wait until he had me alone and could ask my advice. I’m sorry that it’s caused… all this.”

“It’s quite alright,” Lucy assured him, realising abruptly that she was leaning her face on her hand and talking into the phone like mooning teenage girls did in television slows. “Oh— really, it’s only my job, and it’s given me an excuse to put Clementine Delacroix in for counselling.” She considered that maybe that was confidential information, but she had heard quite peculiar sensitive things earlier on from Felix’s playful argument. That only levelled the playing field.

“Thank you so much for consoling Daisy, honestly. She can work herself into such a state and the fact that you talk it through with her as opposed to condescending— it’s really appreciated.” He sounded almost giddy, like an elated schoolboy, and Lucy had to squeeze her eyes shut to get a grip on her racing heart. 

Taking a measured breath, Lucy said, “Thank you, really. I’ve got to go and teach a history lesson, I’m sure the class is running rings about the substitute teacher. Thank you for the… the call.” Thanking him for the compliment would be a bit much, she realised, so she took a wobbling breath instead. “I’ll let you go now.”

“Yes, thank you again!” Felix repeated, and ended the call.

Lucy stared at the phone for a long moment before setting it in its cradle and leaning back in her chair, a ridiculous smile on her face. “Goddammit,” she muttered, and prepared her ‘teaching children about the bubonic plague’ face. It was surprisingly difficult to muster with Felix Mountfitchet on her mind. 


End file.
